Terrorism without Borders: Somalia’s Al-Shabaab and the global jihad network by Daniel E. Agbiboa This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Abstract This article sets out to explore the evolution, operational strategy and transnational dimensions of Harakat Al-Shabab al-Mujahedeen (aka Al-Shabab), the Somali-based Islamist terrorist group. The article argues that Al-Shabab’s latest Westgate attack in Kenya should be understood in the light of the group’s deepening ties with Al-Qaeda and its global jihad, especially since 2009 when Al-Shabab formally pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda and welcomed the organisation’s core members into its leadership. Key words: Al-Shabab, Westgate Attack; Al-Qaeda; Global Jihad; Kenya; Somalia. Introduction n 21 September 2013, the world watched with horror as a group of Islamist gunmen stormed Kenya’s high-end Westgate Mall in Nairobi and fired at weekend shoppers, killing over 80 people. The gunmen reportedly shouted in Swahili that Muslims would be allowed to leave while all others Owere subjected to their bloodletting (Agbiboa, 2013a). Countries like France, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ghana, among others, all confirmed that their citizens were among those affected. The renowned Ghanaian Poet, Kofi Awoonor, was also confirmed dead in the attack (Mamdani, 2013). The Somali-based and Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist terrorist group, Harakat Al-Shabab al-Mujahideen or, more commonly, Al-Shabab – “the youth” in Arabic – have since claimed responsibility for the horrific attack through its Twitter account. In one tweet, the Islamist group said: “The Mujahideen entered #Westgate Mall today at around noon and are still inside the mall, fighting the #Kenyan Kuffar inside their own turf.” In another tweet they stated their refusal to negotiate and later on said, “For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now its time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land” (Edmund and Richard, Reuters, September 21 2013; Agbiboa 2013b). The above tweets suggest that Al-Shabab’s Westgate attack was retribution for Kenya’s military operations against the Islamist group in Somalia. Kenya has about 4,000 troops in southern Somalia. They intervened in 2011 following attacks and kidnappings in northern Kenya near the Somali border. The Kenyans were subsequently incorporated into a larger African Union (AU) force of 17,000 peacekeepers with a United Nations (UN) mandate to protect the weak Somali government. This mandate put the AU forces and Al- Shabab Islamists at daggers drawn (Onuoha, 2013). This article sets out to explore the evolution, operational strategy and transnational dimensions of the Somali-based Islamist terrorist group, Al-Shabab. The article argues that Al-Shabab’s latest Westgate attack JTR, Volume 5, Issue 1 (Special Issue) - February 2014 27 should be understood in the light of the group’s deepening ties with Al-Qaeda and its global jihad, especially since 2009 when Al-Shabab formally pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda and welcomed the organisation’s core members into its leadership. The article begins by exploring the evolution of Somalia’s Al-Shabab, as well as its growing friendship with Al-Qaeda which has transformed the group into one that perpetrates the kind of coordinated attack we recently witnessed at the Westgate mall in Kenya. It then provides a brief explanation of the main objectives and unifying ideology of Al-Qaeda’s global jihad, as well as expectations from Islamist groups, like Al-Shabab, that claim loyalty to the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation. The conclusion summarises the key arguments of the article and outlines key knowledge requirements for more effective anti-terrorism measures. The Evolution and Transformation of Al-Shabab Al-Shabab was formed as a radical offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which, in 2006, controlled Mogadishu (Fergusson, 2013). The Islamist group, which controls about half of south-central Somalia, is estimated to have between 7,000 to 9,000 fighters, mainly recruited within Somalia but also from Western countries (BBC News Africa, 2013). Al-Shabab originally emerged as a remnant of al Itihaad al Islamiya (AIAI)—a Wahhabi Islamist terrorist organisation which arose in Somalia in the 1980s with the intention of replacing the regime of Mohammed Said Barre with an Islamic state. In 2000, AIAI remnants – mostly young members – reformed into Al-Shabab and were incorporated into the ICU as its radical youth militia. The Ethiopian invasion [1] of Somalia in December 2006 marked a watershed in the development and radicalisation of Al-Shabab. First, it provided Al-Shabab with the opportunity to draw on deep-seated Somali hostility towards Ethiopia to recruit thousands of nationalist volunteers (Wise, 2011). Second, the invasion forced Al-Shabab to adopt an effective guerrilla-style operational strategy as a means of resisting Ethiopian advance into the South (Menkhaus and Boucek, 2010). Third, “by forcing the Islamic Courts Union leaders who had exerted a level of moderating influence on Al-Shabab to flee Somalia, the invasion allowed the group to become even more radical, while at the same time severing its ties to other Somali organisations” (Wise, 2011: 2). Although the Ethiopian invasion succeeded in routing the ICU and pushing Al-Shabab to the south of the country, it failed to end Islamic radicalism in Somalia; in fact, it was a primary factor in the ultra-radical turn of Al-Shabab, “transforming the group from a small, relatively unimportant part of a more moderate Islamic movement into the most powerful and radical armed faction in the country” (Wise, 2011: 4). In 2009 Ethiopia withdrew its troops from Somalia, replaced by the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) composed of thousands of Ugandan and Burundian peacekeeping forces. Since 2008, Al-Shabab has demonstrated that it has the operational capability to launch deadly attacks against outposts of the West and perceived enemies outside Somalia. In October 2008, Al-Shabab coordinated five suicide bomb attacks that hit the UN Development Programme compound, the Ethiopian consulate and various government offices, killing several dozen (Ali Noor, 2008). In September 2009, Al-Shabab bombed the African Union peacekeeping mission in Mogadishu, killing more than 20 people and damaging the offices of a U.S. firm that was purportedly providing support to peacekeepers (Agbiboa, 2013b). In July 11, 2010, Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for suicide bombing of two groups of fans watching the World Cup in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, which killed more than 70 people, including one American citizen. The Ugandan attacks, according to Al-Shabab, were launched to punish the country for its role in assisting AMISOM forces in Somalia (Onuoha, 2013), in the same way that the recent Westgate attack was launched to punish Kenya for its military operations in Somalia since August 2011. JTR, Volume 5, Issue 1 (Special Issue) - February 2014 28 The argument that I make in this article is that to understand the transformation of Al-Shabab, one has to consider how the group came to be incorporated within a global jihadist movement led by Al-Qaeda. Forging ties between Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabab Al-Qaeda operated in Sudan in the early 1990s as host of the Islamist regimes of Omar al Bashir and Hassan al Turabi (Lorenzo et al. 2010: 218). However, the organisation soon set its sights on war-torn Somalia when it learnt that American troops were going to be deployed into it in order to restore order and provide supplies to the local population. Addressing a core group of Al-Qaeda members in late 1993, Bin Laden declared: “The American army now they came [sic] to the Horn of Africa, and we have to stop the head of the snake... the snake is America, and we have to stop them. We have to cut the head and stop them” (cited in Lorenzo et al. 2010: 218). Following discussions between Al-Qaeda’s military wing commander Abu Hafs al Masri and AIAI’s military wing commander Shaykh Hassan Awey’s, four Al-Qaeda instructors were sent to Somalia to “train other Somalis” linked to the AIAI in advanced combat tactics and weapons. According to the Al- Shabab Media Foundation, Al-Qaeda’s official propaganda wing, these instructors taught Somali Islamists “the tactics of guerrilla warfare, in addition to taking part in a number of combat operations against the Americans” (Lorenzo et al. 2010: 218). The relationship between Al-Qaeda and the AIAI leadership continued after the US withdrew from Somalia. In 1996, Al-Qaeda moved its base to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where Bin Laden forged a close relationship with the Taliban (CNN, February 5, 2002). A number of key members of the AIAI leadership travelled with Al-Qaeda to Afghanistan to receive training in Al-Qaeda’s combat strategy, including suicide attacks and simultaneous bombings of different targets. One of them was Aden Hashi Farah Ayrow, a senior AIAI military commander. Propaganda materials released by Al-Shabab suggest that Ayrow grew “fond of the way Al-Qaeda worked and admired its doctrine, its strategy to change the Islamic world, and its call for jihad against Christians. Ayrow met many mujahedeen brothers in various positions within the organisation, and he also met Shaykh Usama Bin Laden, may Allah preserve him” (Lorenzo et al. 2010: 219). The report further noted that at the end of this first tour of Afghanistan, Ayro had become “a military encyclopaedia – he was unparallel in the Horn of Africa region... He took Shaykh Usama’s advice and returned to Somalia in order to spread the idea of global jihad and the path of Al-Qaeda – confronting the Christian world” (Ibid).